Serious Games: "The Value of it All"

In chapter nine of Nielsen's text, the authors analyze video games and the value of the interactions within. More specifically, we are given a look into how video games may act as a media form existing for more than just entertainment. While referencing the use of video games as advertisements (advertainment), as discussed earlier in the class, as well as a means of furthering political agendas (ie. war games or games referring to popular culture), the authors place a particular emphasis on the video game as a form of "edutainment," or educational entertainment (Nielsen, p. 211). However, the assumptions brought about by this prescriptive analysis for "edutainment" again rely heavily on the assumption that games do hold the power to encourage and foster learning.

With the instructional approach to "edutainment," the authors "attempt to describe how video games can best affect the player and how to deal with various obstacles to learning" including "attention, processing speed, interfaces, and motivation" (Nielsen, p. 214). In order to overcome these limits, it is important that "edutainment" involves a learning experience that is integrated with the entertainment aspect of the game, that there exists a high level of player freedom and control, that there is good balance within the game to encourage effort, and that the gameplay is engaging enough to encourage lasting player interaction within the game (Nielsen, pp. 214-215). While these guidelines have acted as a foundation for edutainment titles over the years, the modern approach to edutainment places a heavy emphasis on the importance of player interaction within the game space, or more generally, on the cognitive learning aspect of such games. While the information found withing such games may be important, the active engagement of players and the construction of knowledge frameworks based on the aforementioned interaction is absolutely critical to an entertainment medium acting as education (Nielsen, p. 216).

The authors then introduce four "foundational issues" facing the edutainment field today: learning vs. playing, drill-and-practice vs. microworlds, immersion vs transfer, and finally, teacher intervention. The concern of learning vs. playing exists in regards to the separation of the educational and "fun" parts of the game, oftentimes leading to a "clash... evident when the game goals work against the learning goals" and potentially ruining the learning experience (Nielsen, p. 217). The drill-and-practice vs. microworlds issue addresses the flawed design grammars of edutainment titles today as the large majority of them rely on basic repetition to encourage learning rather than providing a game environment in which the players can actually interact and engage with the educational material (Nielsen, p. 218). Then the issue of immersion vs. transfer specifically refers to how these same flawed design grammars make it difficult for edutainment consumers to effectively apply the concepts and skills learned within a game to the outside world. More specifically, "most games are not constructed in a way to make the knowledge accessible in other contexts" (Nielsen, p. 218). Finally, the issue of teacher intervention simply points at the importance of having a teacher present within the learning environment to not only encourage proper learning of material, but in order to enforce what are believed to be the fundamentals to learning including the ever-important debriefing- "the process of reflection after the game has finished" (Nielsen, p. 210).

The authors conclude that there is much potential to be found within video games as tools for education however, we must first understand what it is exactly that we are learning from video games and "whether it is different from what we learn with traditional teaching methods" (Nielsen, p. 220). Moreover, the nature of video game design implies that every gamer- or student, depending on how you view it- will have a unique experience and construct unique meaning-making mechanisms within the game and as such, it is important to understand how to ensure educational effectiveness within such constraints. While this chapter provided me with a clearer understanding of the problems facing the video game industry in terms of how to tap into the educational field, I still put little faith into the future of "edutainment" as an effective alternative to traditional teaching. However, it can also be argued that we are already at a point in time where technology has become deeply inmeshed with the teaching and learning process, and as such, the technologies mediating this process are subtle forms of "edutainment," with emphasis on the "edu-" rather than the "-tainment." Regardless, I understand the inevitability of regular releases of edutainment titles but remain skeptical of their effectiveness.

Do you know of any modern day edutainment titles- by which i mean a game that effectively teaches what it sets out to teach? Why is it that advertisements and "political agendas" have been so effectively and regularly incorporated into games meanwhile educational content has failed to reach the same status?